The New York Times’ readers editor this weekend hit back at accusations by the News of the World that its story on phone-hacking was politically motivated.

Public Editor Arthur Brisbane said the story was justified because it resulted in two new parliamentary investigations of the matter.

He also quotes the NYT’s editor:

Bill Keller, executive editor, said The Times learned during the reporting stages that The News of the World believed the project was “tainted” because of the business rivalry. He rejected the argument that The Times should recuse itself from doing such stories, or that its competitors should do likewise.

News of the World editors, he said, “made clear that this dubious argument would be the paper’s first line of defense, and it probably added another layer of caution to a process that is quite careful under any circumstances,” Mr. Keller said. “It was at least in the back of our minds that because Mr. Murdoch has declared war on The New York Times, a story centered on one of his newspapers had to bend over backwards to be seen as fair. In my view, the process was thorough and scrupulous.

And what did other journalism experts think of it?

I asked several outside experts about it. Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, felt the story was worthwhile on its own merits. “It is very hard to argue that because The Times is competing with The Journal that The Times shouldn’t do a story that is this good,” he said.

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